


Nobody Needs to Know

by everysundoesntrise



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Minor Angst, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-08
Updated: 2017-01-08
Packaged: 2018-09-15 19:45:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9253355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/everysundoesntrise/pseuds/everysundoesntrise
Summary: Winn’s not expecting the colors to come when he sees the man in the pod; he’s not really expecting to fall in love with him either.The soulmate AU where you can’t see in colors until you see your soulmate for the first time.





	

Kara’s been obsessed with soulmates for as long as Winn’s known her. She later admits that on Krypton that they didn’t have anything like it. Everyone was born seeing colors. Winn thinks if anyone deserves the cliche romantic soulmate meeting, it would be Kara. She’s the type of person that would love it (if the amount of soulmate romcoms she’s dragged Winn to is anything to go by) and he doesn’t really think it’s fair that she’s robbed of that experience. She laughs and smiles when he mentions this and remarks that she’ll just have to live vicariously through Winn’s journey to find his soulmate.

Winn doesn’t have the heart to tell her that he’s a cynic about the whole soulmate thing. Hard not to be when fate apparently deemed his mother and father to be soulmates, when his clearest and most vivid memories, the ones that still keep him up at night, are of his father being dragged to prison after murdering six people and his mother abandoning him shortly after. 

When his dad gets out, when he tries to kiss her, when he confesses, she pulls away, “Winn, you don’t see colors yet,” as if that’s enough justification to reject him and he guesses that in her eyes, it is. But he doesn’t need his soulmate, whoever they are, because he’s capable of making his own decisions, capable of being in love with who he wants to be without having to see colors the first time she looks at him. Because if people like his dad have a soulmate on this Earth while people like Kara don’t, then what kind of bullshit system is the soulmate one?

A little while after him and Kara go back to being okay, Siobhan shows up in his life and he doesn’t deny that part of her allure is that she doesn’t hold any value to the soulmate system, says she already met hers but he was holding her back so she just let him go. Maybe she’s a bit shallow and maybe she doesn’t have the best moral compass but she’s exactly what Winn needs right now so he doesn’t care. Kara frowns at him when he tells her that he still sees everything in shades of black and white.

Winn has never really admitted this to anyone, but when he was a kid, he was obsessed with the idea of soulmates, leaving the house as often as he could to see as many people as possible, hoping the colors would come. He told his mom that he had hoped that Superman was his soulmate because how cool would it be to have a superhero alien soulmate? His mom laughed at him, her eyes lingering a little too long on the door, telling him that whoever his soulmate was, they would be perfect for him and if Superman was his soulmate, then Superman was lucky to have one of the best soulmates on the planet Earth.

So when Winn first lays eyes on the man in the pod, the _alien_ man in the pod, and color suddenly floods his vision, some part of him way in the back of his mind, the memory of the child he used to be, had never been happier. Though, the adult and the cynic in Winn saw the benefit in it too. Like Kara, whoever this alien was, he’s probably seen colors his entire life, not understanding the significance it has for humans. He’d never know him and Winn were supposedly soulmates and really that suited Winn just fine. He pretends to still see in black and white, makes a point to tell no one about his sudden change in vision, especially not Kara; she would become obsessed with getting the two together the second the alien woke up from the pod and that’s not something Winn particularly wants (even if he can’t deny that whoever is in that pod is ungodly attractive).

When the alien wakes up, Winn’s working at the DEO now and he figures that more often than not he’ll probably be in close proximity to Mon-El of Daxam as he’s dubbed himself. Supposed soulmate or not, Winn’s still a little obsessed with aliens and no part of him minds that he’s left in charge of running tests and babysitting Mon-El with explicit directions not to let Mon-El leave the DEO.

There’s no problem until he realizes that Mon-El is a bit of a flirt, which really he should've assumed from what Kara’s said about the Daxam royal family and those who worked for it. And Winn’s weak, he really is. Mon-El is an attractive alien and that’s practically his type to a tee. So when Mon-El butters him up and appeals to vanity, it doesn’t take long for them to be at a bar and suddenly Winn’s taking too many shots and he’s lost his entire ability to filter anything and Mon-El looks really cute in the lighting of this bar. Winn feels so light and warm and happy when he blurts out, “You’re my soulmate.” 

He knows that Mon-El doesn’t know what soulmates are or at least doesn’t know the significance that they have on Earth so he hasn’t royally screwed anything up, but Mon-El does seem to get the clue that Winn’s hitting on him. He smirks at Winn and Winn manages to stop himself from swooning. He pushes Winn up against the wall of the bar and they’re kissing.

Kissing Mon-El is so much different than kissing Siobhan. With Siobhan, it was rough, uncommitted, disastrous, a connection built on cynicism. But with Mon-El, there’s something else there, something softer even as Mon-El pulls Winn toward him and kisses him harder, deeper than anything he’s ever known and Winn has to stop himself from completely giving in to this seemingly all-encompassing _want_.  

It doesn’t get much further than kissing because Winn ends up falling asleep at some point and only wakes up to Mon-El’s lack of control over his newfound powers and knows he has to get them back to the DEO.

The whole hooking-up with Mon-El thing hits him almost as hard as the hangover does the next morning. He almost wishes that Mon-El had the ability to get drunk so that there’d be some chance that he didn’t remember what happened last night. But when he sees Mon-El at the DEO the next day, he’s acting like nothing happened and Winn rationalizes that he shouldn’t be surprised because Mon-El of Daxam seems like the textbook definition of frat-boy and Winn doesn’t even care because soulmates are bullshit and it was just a random drunken make-out session that meant absolutely nothing to him. He doesn’t care one bit. He doesn’t think about it every time he’s alone in a room with Mon-El, every time he even opens his eyes and sees color, doesn’t remember how it felt to feel Mon-El’s mouth over every inch of his neck, doesn’t remember Mon-El’s body pressed against him, doesn’t remember moaning, begging for more. 

Forgetting that night is even harder since Mon-El still constantly flirts with him, calling him cute and smiling at him like he’s something special. It’s moments like those that make Winn look away, because he can feel his heart somersault in his chest and he hasn’t felt anything like that since Kara Danvers. It certainly doesn’t become any easier when Kara informs him that Mon-El asked her about soulmates the other day and claimed that he had a fond look in his eyes that she’s never seen from him before when he mentioned that he heard it at the bar the night him and Winn went out. Kara asks him if he saw Mon-El with anyone that night, anyone that might have ‘stolen his heart.’

Winn scoffs. If there’s one thing he’s sure of, Mon-El didn’t seem to be affected by their night together at all, but he has to give Kara something to get her off his back, “I think he was dancing with some girl with blue hair,” because at some point that night, Mon-El had. He doesn’t realize his mistake until he’s already said it. Kara didn’t know he had seen his soulmate. In Kara’s eyes, Winn shouldn’t have the ability to discern blue hair from brown hair and he can’t believe that as someone who prides himself on his intelligence, he just made such a stupid mistake. 

Kara catches his mistake immediately too, “You can see them? Colors?”

He knows there’s no point in lying to her, so he just nods. 

She looks so happy for him, probably thinking that this is the moment where everything in his life is going to come together. She’s talking faster than normal, excitement clearly palpable,  “Well, who is it? Where are they? When did this happen? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“They don’t know I’m their soulmate.”

He thinks he may have just heard Kara’s heartbreak, at least that’s what he sees in her eyes, “But how? Even if it’s in a crowd, everyone says you can still tell who your soulmate is, that soulmates always get their colors at the same time. Unless, your soulmate’s an alien?”

She seems to take Winn’s silence as confirmation and it doesn’t take a genius to put the pieces together after that because it’s not like Winn knows a lot of aliens, “Mon-El? Mon-El is your soulmate?” 

Winn kind of shrugs, wanting to talk about anything but this, but Kara’s not backing down from it, “Why haven’t you told him?” 

“Because I don’t have the same belief in the soulmate system that you do, Kara,” Winn feels himself getting frustrated and he hates it, “And even if I did, he hasn’t said anything to me since that night at the bar.”

“That doesn’t make any sense, Winn,” Kara’s frowning at him, “Besides, you told me that you didn’t want to hold things in anymore.”

Winn thinks that’s a pretty low blow all things considered and he hates that some part of him knows that she’s right, “Fine, I’ll talk to him.” 

Kara hugs him and beams at him like she’s just sent him on the path to eternal happiness; Winn feels more like he’s walking to his own death, but he doesn’t really have the heart to tell Kara that, not when she’s been waiting for Winn to meet his soulmate since practically the minute she met him.

The second he sees Mon-El, sitting on a table in the training room, waiting for Winn, he feels himself clam up a bit, feels the words already getting stuck in his mouth before he even tries to speak them. He’s never really thought of himself as the bravest person, so he’s not really surprised that all he can really manage out is, “Hey.”

Mon-El stares back at him, a smile breaking out on his face,“Winn!”

Winn doesn’t say anything for a couple minutes, just looks forward somewhere on Mon-El’s face, avoiding eye contact. Mon-El’s still smiling at him in a way that makes Winn feel slightly uncomfortable, but there’s something about it that compels Winn to bring his gaze to Mon-El’s eyes, the color blue overwhelming him and Winn has to do everything in his power to not look away now that he’s finally had the courage to look at him in the first place. But the way he’s looking at Winn, like Winn’s someone he doesn’t want to leave behind, makes it hard. 

Mon-El’s finally the one to end the silence, “Is this some sort of flirting that people on Earth do? Because while I do enjoy staring at you, there seem to be more effective methods than this.” 

“It’s not how people flirt unless you want to creep someone out, not that I want to creep you out or that I was flirting with you, not that I don’t want to flirt with you or anything,” Winn has to wonder how that managed to come out of his mouth, “I’m just nervous.”

Mon-El’s confused look invites him to continue, “I wanted to talk about the other night, at the bar.”

“What about it?”

“We kind of hooked up, like full on made-out and I blurted that you were my soulmate and that’s kind of a big deal on Earth.” 

That seems to just make Mon-El light up even more, “I know. I asked Kara about it and I’m glad I’m your soulmate than. Takes a lot of pressure off courtship and dating, doesn’t it?”

“What?” 

“Dating? Isn’t that what it’s called on Earth? We call it something really different on Daxam but it seems like it’s about the same thing,” and Winn hates that Mon-El looks so cute while he’s somehow confused and simultaneously severely altering Winn’s conception of reality at the same time. 

“You think that we’re dating?”

Mon-El seems to pout a little (and Winn didn’t even know that was an expression that he could make) and he nods, “You told me I was your soulmate and then we ‘hooked-up,’” and he puts air quotes around it, “Then we continued to flirt with each other. I assumed you just wanted to ‘slow cook it’ as Kara said?”

“Take it slow,” Winn corrects, before his brain really has time to process anything that Mon-El just said, “I figured you thought of us as a more of a one-night kind of deal. Like ‘wow he looks good in the bar-light when he’s tipsy but not really anywhere else.’”

“You look good in any lighting.” Mon-El states matter-of-factly and Winn has to admire him for it because Winn can’t flirt that genuinely very easily. And maybe for Mon-El, it is that matter-of-fact. There’s no complications to it, not like there are in Winn’s mind. Mon-El makes it seem so simple that Winn doesn’t see why he shouldn’t believe it is too.

Winn walks closer to Mon-El, so that he’s looking up at the man sitting on the table, “I like you and not because you’re supposedly my soulmate. I don’t need to ‘slow cook it.’”

"Well then, since we’ve been dating for three weeks,” Mon-El smirks down at him, “Let’s act like it.” 

The feelings of want and something close to what Winn thinks might be love rush back as Mon-El kisses him. He thinks there might be video cameras in this room and normally he’d be embarrassed but he can’t bring himself to care as Mon-El pulls him closer.

Winn still doesn’t really believe in soulmates, but he thinks Mon-El and him could be good together and he’s not going to let his cynicism about some label that supposedly pre-ordains them to be together get in the way of that.

He looks down at their hands intertwined together and sees the colors all around them and he’s never thought colors looked so beautiful.


End file.
